How much do you have to earn to be rich in France? At least €3,860 in after-tax monthly salary for a single person, €5,790 for a couple, and €9,650 for a family with two teenagers, according to the answer provided by France’s Observatoire des Inégalités (Inequality Observatory), in the third edition of its report on the rich, published on Wednesday, June 5.

As a result, 4.7 million French people are rich, according to the Observatory’s calculations, which are based on 2021 National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) data. This represents 7.4% of the country’s population. It is less than in 2011 when 5.5 million rich people were counted in the country, the record peak over the last 20 years.

The number of rich people has therefore fallen by almost 800,000 between 2011 and 2021 – but the rich, especially those at the top of the charts, have been getting wealthier and wealthier. Half of them enjoy a standard of living in excess of 1.28 times the wealth threshold required to be rich, compared with 1.26 times in 2011. Moreover, while the wealthiest 1% of them seized 7.7% of all pre-tax income in the early 1980s, in 2022 this figure has risen to 12.6%. “Since the previous report published in 2022, we’ve seen more of an intensification of wealth than an overall increase in inequality,” said Louis Maurin, the director of the independent Observatory. In short, the rich are getting richer, though there are fewer of them.

However, the subject raises the thorny question of how to define “rich” which is far from being met with consensus. How did the Inequality Observatory set the threshold at €3,860 for a single person, when there is no “official” statistical definition of richness in France? Quite simply by basing their analysis on the poverty line, which is defined by the INSEE, and which enables public policies to be targeted at the most disadvantaged populations.

A political issue

This poverty line is determined based on the median standard of living which splits the population into two equal halves: Currently, this stands at €1,930 after taxes and social benefits, once again for a single person. The INSEE then defines the poorest segment of the population as those earning less than 60% of this median standard of living, a threshold that is also used in other European Union countries.

There is also a 50% threshold: This is the one used by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the one used by the observatory. “We considered that the rich were those who received double this median standard of living,” explained Maurin – hence the figure of €3,860.

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